Meet Halsey, Pop Music's New Beauty Icon

Meet Halsey, Pop Music's New Beauty Icon

In an era when wigs have lost their taboo and neon hair colour is worn by even the most unexpected stars, there's no denying that it's tough to stand out. However, this rainbow of options makes the journey to "find your look" a captivating one, especially when the person happens to work in pop music.

Enter Halsey, the 21-year-old American pop singer-songwriter who has arrived on the scene just in time to throw the industry a (beauty) curveball. In her short career, she's tried more hair colours and lengths than most of us could dream of, only to shave her head for reasons you may not expect (but more on that later).

Not that she needed the attention: Her debut album, Badlands, has already hit gold. She has millions of devoted fans, and she's in the middle of her U.S. tour (Oh, and there have been Justin Bieber moments along the way, too.)

Her beauty transformation, which you'll see ahead, is punctuated by an even-more-unusual collaboration with MAC: a limited-edition grey (yes, grey) lipstick that just launched this week as part of their Future Forward collection. Not surprisingly, she mixed the shade herself, but not in the lab. "I did it with acrylic paints, and I sent them a swatch board of all the colours," she told us. "I don’t think they were expecting me to be that involved. They were like, 'Oh wow, you were really excited about this.'" And that she is: "I fucking love makeup," she says, which is why this project had to bring more than just a pretty colour to the table.

"I wanted to do something that's an easy step to trying something daring," Halsey told us. "And something androgynous, because makeup has become such a broad thing that is appreciated by all genders. It’s not a gay thing, it’s not a straight thing, it’s not a girl thing, it’s not a boy thing." But it's even more than that: "The way we present ourselves and the way we look really does have a big effect on our state of mind and our personality. That’s why I change my hair so much," she explains. "I definitely have different personalities with different hairstyles, so I hope that whatever personality this lipstick gives people is a really confident, badass one."

Ahead, we documented more than a dozen of the star's best beauty moments, narrated by the musician herself.